Farmers' Federation blueprint for Australian farming

DEVELOPING robotic technologies to ease the need for human labour on farms and producing protein-based food in labs are among radical proposals to stimulate the Australian agricultural industry.

The National Farmers' Federation Blueprint for Australian Agriculture, to be launched in Canberra today, calls for a revolution in the industry and the way farmers, governments and communities think about the sector.

It warns that as the world raced to capture global markets in the past decade, Australian agriculture came to a standstill "with no major engines of growth currently in motion".

The industry is worth nearly $50 billion a year to the Australian economy and employs more than 300,000 people, while it is worth $6 billion in South Australia.

The wide-ranging blueprint said the revolution is needed to help equip the sector to meet its potential to feed a growing world population, expected to need 70 per cent more food by 2050.

Suggestions to help Australian agriculture flourish include the use of fly-in, fly-out workforces, genetic modification of crops, improved availability of capital, shifts

in ownership models and a more internationally competitive industry.

Another suggestion is the need for funding arrangements that share production risks between farmers and corporate backers.

It shows 300 farmers a month are leaving the land while there are about 100,000 less farmers now than in 1981.

It says agriculture could develop an industry-wide pilot project to develop and adapt robotic technologies that could ease the need for human labour.

Also, beyond the short term, agriculture is likely to see "new technologies such as the production of protein-based food products without animals (via laboratory-based technologies), and 3D printing of food being adopted."

National Farmers' Federation president Jock Laurie said the seven main themes in the report were all about taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the world's need for significantly more food production.

South Australian farmer Nathan Wegener from Callington has few fears for his future as long as he remains competitive.

"So long as people keep eating, we will have something to do," he said.

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